AAC: Redesigning Scanning With Animation and Sound Cues

The following post was written by Karen Gliniecki, AAC specialist, Advancing Opportunities

I recently attended a seminar at the ASHA convention which encouraged those of us involved in AAC to take a fresh look at scanning systems. This seminar was presented by John McCarthy from Ohio U. During the seminar two changes in scanning were proposed. The first was to add animation to visually highlight the scanned items. The second was to utilize sound cues, often environmental sounds relevant to the message, to provide scanned auditory cues. As I reminisced about several failed attempts to introduce auditory scanning to potential AAC users, I began to wonder if the “sound cues” approach would reduce some of the confusion that auditory scanners and their communication partners face. I also began to wonder about applying this type of auditory cueing strategy to an auditory fishing format. It has been my experience that many potential auditory scanning/fishing users and their communication partners have difficulty differentiating between the auditory cues and the intended messages. I look forward to further research in this area.

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